CRP In the News – OpenSecrets Newshttps://www.opensecrets.org/news
Breaking news, original reporting, and investigative journalism *on money in politics from the Center for Responsive PoliticsWed, 19 Dec 2018 02:30:02 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8Foreign Lobby Watch Demonstrationhttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/foreign-lobby-watch-demonstration/
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 20:37:30 +0000https://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=28805Just about any country you can think of has interests in the United States, and many governments, companies and other entities pay foreign agents to influence U.S. policy and opinion in pursuit of those interests.

]]>Just about any country you can think of has interests in the United States, and many governments, companies and other entities pay foreign agents to influence U.S. policy and opinion in pursuit of those interests.

Foreign Lobby Watch uses the semi-annual reports foreign agents are required to file with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to calculate the countries with the highest spending, learn more about different registrants acting on behalf of foreign interests, and more!

Figures on this page are calculations by the Center for Responsive Politics based on reports made available by the Department of Justice and updated daily. Totals reflect payments received between January 1, 2017 and present. Read more about our methodology.

In his 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama found that fiery speeches about the damaging role of special interest influence, lobbyists and the need to “change the culture in Washington” were enormously popular on the campaign trail. More recently, President-elect Donald Trump was even more successful in employing even more sweeping assurances about, as he put it, “draining the swamp.”

If only it were so easy. Unfortunately, governing is different from making promises on the campaign trail. As Obama and others have found, these particular problems are deeply entrenched.

And this time, the distance between the candidate’s promises and his actions post-election is looking more like a chasm. The shock and concern about Trump’s break with decades of US foreign policy to speak with Taiwan’s President was compounded by the revelation that it resulted from six months and $140,000 worth of behind-the-scenes work by former Sen. Bob Dole…

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/12/trump-really-drain-swamp/feed/0CRP calls on FCC to include cable, satellite and radio in political ad filing requirementshttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/01/crp-calls-on-fcc-to-include-cable-satellite-and-radio-in-political-ad-filing-requirements/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/01/crp-calls-on-fcc-to-include-cable-satellite-and-radio-in-political-ad-filing-requirements/#respondFri, 22 Jan 2016 19:58:07 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=12654Yesterday, the Center for Responsive Politics called on the Federal Communications Commission to vote in favor of expanding its current…

]]>Yesterday, the Center for Responsive Politics called on the Federal Communications Commission to vote in favor of expanding its current online repository of political ad data filed by stations around the country. This information is critically important for research into the role of political organizations in elections and in setting the policy agenda, as well as for oversight by agencies charged with making sure the groups sponsoring ads are operating lawfully.

More specifically, in the case of politically active nonprofit organizations, this data is the key to understanding how the groups operate in periods that fall outside the Federal Election Commission’s reporting windows.

Not long ago, information on political ad buys — files detailing who is buying the ads, how much they’re paying and when the ads are running, among other things — could only be accessed by going to each station in person and inspecting paper documents. In mid-2012, however, the FCC voted to require that the filings be sent electronically to the agency, which makes them available online.

But the requirement applies only to network affiliates; cable and satellite TV stations as well as radio outlets have been exempt, even though their viewers and listeners are important targets for political messages. CRP believes a decision to expand the filing requirement to cover these outlets is past due. To that end, we stand with other organizations in the transparency community that have called on the FCC to vote in favor of the expansion.

In lending our support for this action, we are also echoing calls for the agency to address certain shortcomings of the current system. First, filers should be required to submit their reports to the Consolidated Database System (CDBS), maintained by the FCC. In 2016, requiring a station to submit its files into a particular online database like this would be no undue burden for them and would allow the public enhanced access to the information.

Second, the public inspection files should be searchable and machine-readable. While the current system is far better than the paper system that existed previously, CRP has spent months developing a system to code, process and standardize the data that’s available so that it can be linked up to relevant FEC and IRS data. While we’ve made great strides in scraping the PDFs and setting up standardization procedures, the FCC could make these procedures much easier and thus make the data more accessible to the public.

We also agree that the FCC should not require that complaints be filed only by residents of areas where the ads in question have run.

The proliferation of advertisements run by outside groups that legally are able to obscure sponsors’ identities makes it increasingly important that each ad’s sponsors be publicly disclosed. As such, we support the full and consistent enforcement of the public file and sponsorship identification requirements of Section 317 of the Communications Act.

Super PACs have sponsored 81 percent of the TV ads in the GOP presidential primaries, up about 71 percent over 2011 and 12,000 percent over 2007 outside group activity.

The findings are included in a new report from the Wesleyan Media Project, with which the Center for Responsive Politics partnered. The report shows that this year (through Dec. 9), outside spending groups have sponsored 35,743 of 44,270 of the ads in the Republican primaries.

But there’s a big disconnect, in most cases, between the amount of money spent advertising on a candidate’s behalf and how well that candidate is doing in the polls. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the pro-Bush Right to Rise USA super PAC have aired more than 15,000 ads on broadcast television, national network and national cable television since January 1, at a cost of almost $26 million. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has aired no ads, and Ted Cruz has benefited from only 457 ads since the start of the year (through December 9th). Bush’s poll numbers are terrible, though, while Trump and Cruz have been surging.

Almost all the advertising is coming from single candidate groups, and most of it is sponsored by groups that disclose who their donors are.

The main exception: Conservative Solutions Project, which has been the main group advertising in support of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). It is a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group that doesn’t disclose the names of its donors — not a super PAC like virtually all of the other groups airing ads. It has been the second biggest spender in the race, after Right to Rise.

Conservative Solutions Project is an example of the single-candidate dark money group, a new breed that appeared in the 2014 elections, as we explained in our blog post about Carolina Rising and its support for now-Sen. Thom Tillis (R) in North Carolina. Carolina Rising, it turned out, was funded almost entirely by the biggest of the politically active dark money groups, Crossroads GPS — which ranks No. 1 in each of the past several years in the percentage of its funds that have been spent on politics, according to a new tally by CRP. But where the money originally came from is unclear.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/12/super-pacs-rule-the-airwaves-in-gop-primaries-wesleyan-media-project-and-crp-document-the-onslaught/feed/0NYT op-ed: A new low in campaign financehttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/10/nyt-op-ed-a-new-low-in-campaign-finance/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/10/nyt-op-ed-a-new-low-in-campaign-finance/#respondTue, 27 Oct 2015 17:35:22 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=11731Please be sure to read our op-ed in today’s (Oct. 27) New York Times. The piece, by the Center for…

]]>Please be sure to read our op-ed in today’s (Oct. 27) New York Times. The piece, by the Center for Responsive Politics’ Robert Maguire, lays out the case of Carolina Rising, a politically active 501(c)(4) group that spent virtually all of its money — almost all of it received from one secret donor — on ads promoting a single candidate in 2014. That candidate, state legislator Thom Tillis, was running to represent North Carolina in the U.S. Senate.

Tillis won his race. But Carolina Rising appears to have broken IRS rules prohibiting, among other things, the use of such groups for the benefit of a single person or group.

The question, though, is whether the IRS or the FEC will act. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is testifying today before the Senate Finance Committee about the agency’s targeting of certain politically active 501(c) groups in 2010-2012. But as the 2016 presidential election approaches, voters might be better served if the agencies enforced the law.

Read the full piece here. A longer piece on Carolina Rising’s activities is here.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/10/nyt-op-ed-a-new-low-in-campaign-finance/feed/0Departed members of the 113th Congress find new homes on K Street, and elsewherehttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/05/departed-members-of-the-113th-congress-find-new-homes-on-k-street-and-elsewhere/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/05/departed-members-of-the-113th-congress-find-new-homes-on-k-street-and-elsewhere/#respondWed, 20 May 2015 18:15:07 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=9839Former members of the 113th Congress have embarked on various new adventures since their defeats, retirements or departures for other…

Former members of the 113th Congress have embarked on various new adventures since their defeats, retirements or departures for other reasons: Some are teaching, others are pondering away at think tanks, a couple are embedded in corporate culture, a few are even enjoying their freedom and sleeping a little later every morning.

Not surprisingly, though, many of these former House and Senate members have found new perches on K Steet at lobbying firms large and small.

CRP’s revolving door data, which we will continue to update, shows that 42 of the 75 who left Capitol Hill at the end of the last Congress or sometime during that two-year term are currently employed — 18 of them by lobbying firms or law firms that also lobby.

In an interview with OpenSecrets Blog, Matheson described his current role as “building client relationships and offering strategic advice” during the cooling-off period when he can’t directly lobby Congress (that’s one year for former House members, two years for former senators) — while also noting that he “can still interact with executive branch agencies.”

Asked about the fact that so many former lawmakers are now at firms seeking to influence Congress on behalf of paying clients, Matheson defended the practice. Lobbying is “a very regulated and transparent industry,” Matheson said. “[F]ormer members have a perspective to bring to the table in terms of navigating the public policy process.” He added that the cooling-off period is appropriate both “substantively and for the optics.” (For a rundown of former members whose cooling-off periods ended at the start of the 114th Congress, see our project with the Sunlight Foundation.)

One former House member snared a gig as the head of something called the Better Medicare Alliance — not a lobbying firm, but a group that is all about influencing Capitol Hill. Allyson Schwartz, who made a bid last year to be governor of Pennsylvania but lost in the Democratic primary, became president and CEO of the group, which was formed by health insurance companies to try to stave off scheduled cuts to the Medicare Advantage program.

Robert L. Walker, a former chief counsel and staff director on both the House and Senate Ethics Committees and currently of counsel at Wiley Rein, is not surprised by the post-congressional career path chosen by many of these former members. “It used to happen, it does happen, and will continue to happen,” Walker told the Blog. He added that each shift should occur “in an appropriately transparent and ethical way…that’s always been the challenge.”

Others who are recovering from their service in the House and Senate are making use of their subject matter expertise in ways that don’t appear to involve lobbying or lobbying-ish activities. Former House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), for example, is now a senior education advisor at Cengage Learning, a provider of online educational services; former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is using his familiarity with the tax system as a senior policy advisor at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Both Miller and Camp retired from Congress, but defeat is no obstacle to big paychecks in the private sector, as proven by onetime House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), whose loss in Virginia’s GOP primary was one of the most unexpected outcomes of 2014. Cantor is now a vice chairman and managing director at investment banking firm Moelis & Co.

An eclectic mix of former lawmakers landed at think tanks or nonprofits. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a former physician, is at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, and Rep. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), who played 14 seasons in the NFL, became chairman of the board at the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation; neither Coburn nor Runyan ran for re-election. A West Virginia duo consisting of former Rep. Nick Rahall (D) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) are focusing on more global issues: Rahall, who lost his seat in November after serving 19 terms, is on the board of directors of the World Affairs Council, while Rockefeller, who retired, is at the Council on Foreign Relations as a distinguished fellow.

And then, of course, there are former Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and John Kerry, who were awarded plum public sector positions. Baucus, of Montana, has been U.S. Ambassador to China since early last year. Kerry, who represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 1985, served just a few weeks in the 113th Congress before becoming Secretary of State.

Whatever the former members of the 113th have to say about their service in Congress, one thing seems pretty clear: Capitol Hill is not a bad stepping stone to future employment.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/05/departed-members-of-the-113th-congress-find-new-homes-on-k-street-and-elsewhere/feed/0Data Delayed is Democracy Deniedhttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/07/data-delayed-is-democracy-denied/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/07/data-delayed-is-democracy-denied/#respondThu, 17 Jul 2014 12:34:27 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=4658This op-ed appeared in The New York Times on July 17. Billions of dollars are being spent in the run-up to this…

Billions of dollars are being spent in the run-up to this November’s midterm elections. The Supreme Court has struck down limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions, as well as overall caps on individual donations to candidates for federal office. More and more money is also being spent through ostensibly independent “super PACs” and nonprofit entities.

Even as cash gushes through the system, though, we still have a key underpinning of our campaign finance law: the principle that the public has a right to know who finances campaigns, and how candidates, parties and other political committees are using those funds. If the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with receiving and reviewing the reports and making the information available, falls down on the job, this principle is undermined.

On May 21, about a month after reports for the first quarter of this year were filed, the research and technology teams here at the Center for Responsive Politics did a routine download of F.E.C. data, as we’ve done hundreds of times in our 30-year history. We use the information to populate a database that allows anyone to track giving by individual donors, their employers and their economic interests and to examine the links among campaign money, lobbying activity and the personal finances of politicians and key officials.

Ascertaining that contributions are characterized correctly — Did the funds come from individuals? Did they flow through another organization? Are the donors and recipients identified correctly? — has been a basic responsibility of the F.E.C. almost since its inception, along with tasks like making sure the data reflect amended filings and avoid duplication of records. This processing isn’t particularly high-tech, but it has to be done right, and quickly.

For years, the F.E.C. has said in its strategic planning documents that it would complete 95 percent of its processing within 30 days of a filing deadline.

So when we downloaded the F.E.C. files on May 21, we believed that virtually all reports from 2014 House candidates submitted by April 15 would be included. We were shocked to find, however, that information for 347 of the 703 active House candidates for the first quarter of the year was missing.

We asked the F.E.C. if something unusual — an information technology crisis, perhaps — had occurred. The response was much more disturbing: The agency told us it simply hadn’t finished processing the filings. We’d never heard that one before.

The F.E.C. has been frequently derided as an ineffective body because, with its structure of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners, getting agreement on anything can be tortuous. But for the most part, the commission was seen as doing an adequate job on disclosure.

That perception appears no longer to be correct.

As an F.E.C. employee from 1981 to 2011 — I served as a statistician, as the chief press officer, and as a special assistant helping to set up the agency’s website and electronic filing system, among other roles — I bear no small share of responsibility for failing to move the commission further in the direction of effective disclosure. Sadly, the agency has lost sight of the core elements of its mission.

The missing data wasn’t the first lapse. There have been long periods over the last year, for instance, when important parts of the disclosure portal on the F.E.C. website have been unavailable.

But we were so struck by the missing information for many campaigns that we asked the F.E.C. for detailed breakdowns of the time required to process new filings in each quarter over the last several years. We expected to be able to tell whether this lag was an aberration, or part of a trend.

The answer we received alarmed us.

“The Commission is keenly aware of the brief delay in the processing of itemized transactions filed in the campaign finance reports,” the F.E.C. press office told us in a letter, adding, “In the current two-year election cycle, the Agency has taken more than 30 days to process 18.8 percent of the new reports filed as of June 20, as compared to 11.4 percent for the same period in the 2011-2012 cycle.”

This increase in delays, and the lackadaisical characterization of the delays as “brief,” are disconcerting. (We didn’t receive numbers by quarter for previous years, as we’d requested.)

The F.E.C.’s very model for receiving and disclosing the reports doesn’t work. In a world in which information is recorded in databases and transmitted electronically, campaigns and committees should be responsible for properly organizing and presenting the data as they prepare their filings. It shouldn’t be up to the F.E.C. to clean up errors and omissions, as it has historically done.

While funding shortages are a problem, they don’t adequately explain these delays — nor did the commission cite them as a problem in its response to us. Instead, we believe that the organization has neglected a crucial responsibility.

With so much money sloshing through our political system, thanks in part to the Supreme Court, accurate, consistent and complete disclosure of information becomes the only tool voters have to assess who’s funding our electoral politics. The F.E.C. must recommit itself to its basic obligation to save what’s left of our campaign finance laws.

To stay up-to-date on our work, follow OpenSecrets on Facebook and on Twitter at @OpenSecretsDC.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/07/data-delayed-is-democracy-denied/feed/0Spotlight on the Site: Who’s Cashing In On Campaigns (Anomaly Tracker No. 5)https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/06/spotlight-on-the-site-whos-cashing-in-on-campaigns-anomaly-tracker-no-5/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/06/spotlight-on-the-site-whos-cashing-in-on-campaigns-anomaly-tracker-no-5/#respondMon, 30 Jun 2014 11:45:47 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=4390Attention, supersleuth readers: We have a brand new tool for you to play with, a new category on our anomaly…

Attention, supersleuth readers: We have a brand new tool for you to play with, a new category on our anomaly tracker. This one is focused on outlier expenditures of political committees, allowing you to find out when more than 50 percent of a committee’s money goes to a single vendor — and who those cash-guzzlers are.

One important note: These are anomalies in the statistical sense, the committees and recipients that stand out in the data. That doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything improper happening. All it means is that a particular committee devotes an unusually large percentage of its money to one campaign vendor or consultant. Maybe that consultant is really good at what they do, or maybe the committee has a very specific purpose for which a particular vendor is uniquely suited.

This won’t necessarily flag the Majority Leader’s affinity for steakhouses, but it might indicate which companies are profiting the most from the business of politics. For instance, you’ll see that an Arizona-based call center and direct mailing service called Political Advertising is making millions every cycle from conservative groups, including the Life & Liberty PAC Republican Majority Campaign and RightMarch.com. Other usual suspects include InfoCision Management, a similar communications outfit out of Ohio, and the Gula Graham Group, a Republican fundraising firm based in Washington. InfoCision is so profitable that it has lent its name to a football stadium at the University of Akron, the alma matter of its founder, Gary Taylor. The former CEO also gave the school $3.5 million in 2004 to open the “Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing.”

The fifth anomaly tracker is also a great way to spot the spending habits of certain campaigns. The campaign of Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) has for instance spent $450,000 out of its $780,000 budget at Hotel Florence — suggesting he’s holding a lot of events at the fancy space in South Carolina, probably for fundraising purposes. The leadership PAC of Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Good Fund, spent close to $70,000 at a luxurious resort in Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains called the Homestead. Good to know he’s bringing his donors’ bacon right back home to his district.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/06/spotlight-on-the-site-whos-cashing-in-on-campaigns-anomaly-tracker-no-5/feed/0Dark Money Spending Three Times More Than at Same Time in 2012 Cycle, CRP Testifieshttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/dark-money-spending-three-times-more-than-at-same-time-in-2012-cycle-crp-testifies/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/dark-money-spending-three-times-more-than-at-same-time-in-2012-cycle-crp-testifies/#respondWed, 30 Apr 2014 10:00:41 +0000https://www.opensecrets.org/wp/?p=3764As Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) presides today over a Rules Committee hearing on dark money in the 2014 elections, tallies by the…

]]>As Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) presides today over a Rules Committee hearing on dark money in the 2014 elections, tallies by the Center for Responsive Politics show that nondisclosing groups have already reported spending more than three times as much as they had at this point in the 2012 elections — a presidential cycle when higher spending would be expected.

In written testimony provided for the committee, CRP noted that the spending by groups that don’t disclose their donors — 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and 501(c)(6) trade groups — is also becoming more bipartisan. In previous years, dark money spending was mostly conservative, making up 88 percent of such expenditures in 2010 and 85 percent in 2012. In the 2014 cycle thus far, liberal organizations account for more than 40 percent of the spending by nondisclosing groups.

Spending by liberal nondisclosing groups is more than four times higher than it was at this point in 2012, while their conservative counterparts have tripled their previous spending level.

“Our data demonstrate that substantial and increasing proportions of election advocacy spending are coming from organizations with meaningless names that claim to be exempt from donor disclosure because they are primarily focused on social welfare objectives or professional association activities,” said CRP in its written testimony.

“In fact, however, nothing in statutory language from FECA through BCRA, or in Court decisions from Buckley v. Valeo through McConnell v. FEC, Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC and, most recently, McCutcheon v. FEC suggests the kind of disclosure exemption these groups now claim. All of these statutes and decisions emphasize the role of spender and donor disclosure as a constitutionally permissible and indeed critical element in the campaign finance process.”

Also, in a report just released, the Wesleyan Media Project, in partnership with CRP, finds that 59 percent of the ads aired in Senate races by outside groups so far in the 2014 election cycle have been sponsored by dark money groups. The report uses data from Kantar Media/CMAG, which collects ads run nationwide.

The top-spending group, purely in terms of the cost of television airtime purchased, is Americans for Prosperity, the 501(c)(4) organization closely linked to Charles and David Koch. It has spent an estimated $9 million to run its ads. AFP has publicly stated that it has spent more than $30 million thus far in the cycle, a figure that includes production costs, non-television ads and other expenses.

The report also finds that in North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) is embroiled in an extremely competitive race to keep her seat, more than 90 percent of the ads that have run thus far are sponsored by outside groups, including dark money organizations such as AFP.

]]>In written testimony today for the Senate Rules Committee Hearing entitled “Dollars and Sense: How Undisclosed Money and Post-McCutcheon Campaign Finance Will Affect 2014 and Beyond,” the Center for Responsive Politics highlighted the growing role in electoral politics of groups that don’t disclose their donors.

In one excerpt of the testimony, which was cited by Sen. Angus King (I-ME), CRP writes:

“Our data demonstrate that substantial and increasing proportions of election advocacy
spending are coming from organizations with meaningless names that claim to be exempt from donor disclosure because they are primarily focused on social welfare objectives or professional association activities. In fact, however, nothing in statutory language from FECA through BCRA or in court decisions from Buckley v. Valeo, through McConnell v. FEC, Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC, and most recently McCutcheon v. FEC suggests the kind of disclosure exemption these groups now claim. All of these statutes and decisions emphasize the role of spender and donor disclosure as a constitutionally permissible and indeed critical element in the campaign finance process.”

Additionally, CRP has partnered with the Wesleyan Media Project in the release of a report, “Interest Group Advertising Pours Into Senate Races,” that looks at actual spending on television advertising in the current election cycle. Using data from Kantar Media/CMAG, Wesleyan and CRP found that so far in the 2014 election cycle, outside groups are responsible for 59 percent of the television ads aired in Senate campaigns, a big jump from 2012, and that more than half of those ads have been sponsored by “dark money” groups that won’t disclose their donors.